Inbox Zero
An Obituarist short story
by Patrick O'Duffy
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Patrick O'Duffy
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DEMONSTRATE THAT YOU ARE STILL ALIVE.
'I don't understand what this is,' said Abraham Jericho, looking over my shoulder. 'Is this some kind of bill or something? I said you should take care of all that rather than bother Enoch's family.'
'Not exactly,' I said. I motioned for him to pull up a seat next to me. 'It's a Deathswitch email.'
Jericho pawed at his sweaty face with a handkerchief. 'A what?' My spare office chair groaned slightly under his bulky frame.
I opened the email so that he could see its ominous demand in full. 'It's a little unusual, I know. Deathswitch is a company that stores an email message and then sends it out after you pass away.'
'You mean Enoch asked someone to send an email for him?'
'No, it's automatic. The user sets a time period, such as once a month, and whenever that time rolls around Deathswitch sends them an email, asking them to log in to let them know they're still alive.'
The handkerchief knotted through Jericho's damp fingers as he slowly wrung his hands, eyes flicking down the lines of the email. 'Is this something you set up? I don't... I'm still not entirely clear on what you do, Mister Barber.'
I laughed a bit, mostly to show the kind of polite self-deprecation that my clients tended to like. Yes, my job is strange and silly and just a little creepy, sorry. 'No, this isn't my doing. Some time before your brother's unfortunate accident, he opened an account with Deathswitch. The email might go out to one person or twenty to thirty people, and it could have attachments as well. It's good preparation on his part. I imagine he signed up for it once he developed his heart condition.'
Such a nice euphemism, 'heart condition.' So much less confronting than 'cardiomegaly' or 'chronic hypertensive heart disease', two phrases I'd found in Enoch Jericho's medical records. Similarly, 'unfortunate accident' was far nicer than saying 'your brother had a heart attack while driving and ran his car off a cliff'. Diplomacy truly was the core of my business. Diplomacy and spreadsheets.
Jericho stared at the screen. This close I could smell the sweat rolling off him, the musky stink at odds with the expensive white suit he was wearing. 'And that's what this is – these people are asking him to answer the email?'
'We're actually past that. The initial email was a few days ago, and now we're into a cycle of daily reminders. This is the last one; Enoch's email will go out tomorrow. I really should have spotted it before now, but I was so busy going through his online data that I didn't check his email enough.'
Even to my ears it sounded like an excuse, but it was mostly true. Enoch Jericho and his brother were successful publishers of customised Bibles. Their customers used web tools to design the Bible they wanted, whether that meant putting a logo on the cover or excising uncomfortable mixed messages about rich men, camels and the eyes of needles. It was a big business; everyone wanted their own version of the Word of God, one that conveniently lined up with their existing prejudices and/or brand identity.
Anyway, Abraham Jericho was their sales and production manager, and his job mostly involved finding clients and liaising with paper manufacturers. Enoch had been in charge of marketing, and had an active online presence – not just on the usual social media sites but on a large number of Christian discussion and networking forums. Ferreting out all of his accounts and shutting them down had been time-consuming, and I was learning quite a bit about both custom publishing and the flamewars that raged over interpretation of the Gospels.
Jericho sat back a little in his chair. His lips quivered behind his thick beard, like he was chewing over his thoughts before spitting them into words. 'Enoch never... he never said anything about this.'
'That's not very surprising, sir. This sort of service is for people who don't want to tell people that they're using it. Not until after they're dead. It's for last words. For secrets.'
That last word slapped him upside the head. His lips stopped moving, and his eyes moved from the screen over to me. And stayed on me to the point where I started to become uncomfortable.
At last, he said 'Show me the website. Show me what's in his email.'
I scratched my chin. 'That's not really a good idea. If we log into the site – and that's assuming I can figure out his password – it'll reset the countdown, which means the email won't go out. I can understand your curiosity, but this will disrupt your brother's final wishes. And I'm sure you don't want to do that.'
Jericho stood up slowly, a tiny squeak of relief rising from my chair. He put his hands down on the desk next to me and closed into massive fists. He didn't make a big deal about it, but I was nonetheless acutely aware that a very large, very agitated man was looming over me. 'Show me the fucking website, Barber,' he said.
I showed him the fucking website.
The Deathswitch site opened up with a trill and a beep, like something from a TV show set in the future. I clicked over to the login screen and started by saying that I'd forgotten my password – sometimes that nets you a replacement by email right away. Not this time, though – there was a security question, which was just 'April 2004?' and I had no idea what that meant.
I started working my way through some variations on Enoch’s usual passwords. Jericho stood close behind me, bodyheat beating against the back of my neck. I could see his reflection in the monitor, dark patches of sweat slowly growing under his arms. My office had been grossly vandalised a couple of months ago, and I'd had the air-conditioning overhauled as part of the repairs, so it was pretty cool in the room; this was flop-sweat, not heat-sweat. This was panic and adrenaline oozing through the armpits.
I knew where he was coming from. I was feeling a bit of that myself.
At last I hit on the password – the same one he used for iTunes, but with 'DW' tacked onto the end – and got to his account. 'Here we go,' I said, and Jericho nudged forward to get a better view, his body odour in my nostrils, his fists cocked at his sides. I clicked through to the account page and pulled up the details. There was a long email, scheduled to be sent to a large list of people, along with... 'There's an attachment.'
'Open it,' said Jericho, his voice hoarse.
I clicked the link, a media player window opened, a video started playing and we both watched.
I don't think it was what either of us had really expected.
When it ended, I sat back in my chair, or tried to, but Abraham Jericho was still too close for comfort. He stood there for long moments, chewing his words again, before finally saying 'I don't understand.'
'It's not that complicated,' I said. 'Your brother wrote an email and recorded a video message – a very moving one, to be honest – to tell you and the rest of these people that he was gay.'
'That's nonsense,' Jericho said flatly. 'My brother's not gay. Wasn't gay.'
'Well, that's not what he said in the video. Or the email. He seemed very clear about it.'
He glared down at me. 'Just shut up! 'This doesn't make any sense. This is, this, it's some kind of sick joke! Enoch has a wife and two sons, for God's sake!'
'No sir, it's the truth. I'm sure that you'd find other signs if you cared to look. I mean, I knew it as soon as I found Growlr in his iPhone apps.'
'Growler?'
'It's like Grindr but for bears, and okay, I can see that neither of those words mean anything to you. Never mind. Look, your brother was gay. He was gay, even if he couldn't admit it to his family, even if maybe he couldn't admit it to himself at first. And it meant so much to him to finally tell you about it that he recorded this video and wrote this message. You need to respect that. And him.'
Mentioning the message seemed to rouse Jericho from his whisker-chewing reverie. He bent over to look at the screen, fists still clenched. 'Are there any other attachments to the email? Is there anything else other than, than this?'
I checked the account, the attachment and the email. 'No,' I said, 'that's all there is.'
His shoulders lost some tension and his fists finally uncurled. I wheeled my chair back towards the window to get a little distance from him.
'Now, if you're looking for the evidence that you murdered him,' I said, 'that was on Google Docs.'
That got his attention. Jericho lurched upright and the funk of his flop-sweat burst out anew like a mighty tide of stink. 'What?' he half-shrieked-half-growled.
'Oh come on, I'm sure you've heard of Google Docs, even if you don't use it yourself. Your brother was pretty conversant with it; he had a pile of things on there. Some of which were very, um, personal. But there were also a lot of records, invoices, spreadsheets. So many spreadsheets.'
He didn’t advance towards me, hands out, ready to strangle me. But from his expression it was pretty clear that he wanted to. 'You better make your fucking point, Barber, or God help me...'
I shrugged. 'My point is that you were embezzling money, lots of money – upwards of two hundred thousand dollars, from those records. I'm sure you thought you were clever about it. Putting in false invoices from non-existent vendors, short-changing orders and pocketing the difference, selling bulk lots of 'damaged' stock at full price. I mean, that probably would have worked in a lot of businesses. But your brother was good at his job and good at picking through information. The man wrote a damn thorough spreadsheet, I can tell you that.'
Jericho's eyes were turning red – I couldn't tell if it was rage or tears or both – and flecks of spit were getting caught in his increasingly soggy beard. 'Just shut up! You shut the fuck up! I just... I just...'
'You just needed the money. I understand.' I tried to pitch my voice low and sympathetic. 'But he found out, didn't he? I bet he confronted you about it. Told you off. Made you feel like you were the bad guy, that it was your fault. Is that it?'
'I was going to pay it back!' he yelled. 'I was going to pay it all back! I had a plan, I had a system... I was going to win it all back and more. But Enoch wouldn't, he wouldn't fucking listen! I prayed with him in the chapel at the house, asked God for forgiveness. But he said he was going to take it to the board, to Mother, to our pastor. I couldn't... I couldn't...'
'And you did what you had to do,' I said.
'Yes,' Jericho said, his voice quiet, grateful, glad I was listening to his side of things. 'I smashed his head into the back of the pew. It wasn't... it didn't kill him. It didn't. And then I dragged him out to his car, put him in the driver's seat, took it to the cliff... it was the only thing I could do.' He looked up at me, red-eyed, pleading. 'It was what I had to do.'
'Wow,' I said. 'That's pretty fucked up, Jericho. I thought maybe you were misunderstood, but no, you're a murdering prick after all.'
'You fucking bastard!'Jericho yelled, and started towards me.
That's when my very good friend Detective Grayson stepped out of the office bathroom, pointed his gun at Jericho and said ‘That’s enough!' Well, to be perfectly honest Grayson didn’t like me and I wasn't that fond of him, but right now I could have kissed him full on his greasy moustache.
Jericho paused, I dived for the floor, Grayson ordered him to put his hands up and two uniformed cops burst through the office door, sending a massive crack through the glass panel emblazoned with KENDALL BARBER OBITUARIST. Well, fuck; I'd only had that door repaired a couple of months back. That was going on Jericho's bill.
There was a lot of shouting and yelling and manhandling after that, which I stayed well away from, but eventually Jericho was in handcuffs and Grayson was giving me a withering look while putting his gun in its holster. 'You're a goddamned idiot, Barber. I should never have let you talk me into this bullshit theatre. We should have just arrested Jericho once you came to us with those records.'
'Come on, Detective,' I said, 'you know this was the best way to go. I might speak fluent spreadsheet, but a jury would have a much harder time working out what Enoch's documents meant. This way you got a confession.' And this way I hopefully wouldn't have to appear in court to testify, which was something I preferred to avoid, but I didn't say that.
Grayson snorted. 'I seem to be making a habit of saving your hide from people who want to kill you, Barber. I can't say it's a habit I really enjoy. Try to get into less trouble from now on.'
'I'll do my best,' I said.
Grayson started to say something about coming into the precinct to make a statement, but didn’t get far into it before Abraham Jericho twisted around in the grip of the uniformed cops and staggered a step towards me. 'You have to delete it!' he cried, and that stopped the conversation cold.
‘Delete what?' I asked, confused. 'I'm not erasing evidence, you mad prick.'
'No!' he yelled. 'The email! The video! You have to get rid of it!'
'Enoch's video? Why would I do that?'
'You can't let that email go out!' Jericho plead-shouted. 'He has a family! He has a wife and sons! If word gets out that Enoch was a sodomite, the family, the company will be ruined. We have employees, for heaven's sake, we have twenty people working for us! You'll destroy their jobs! Our mother... you can't... I'm still paying you, damnit!' And he continued in that vein until the cops got a better grip on him and dragged him out the door.
Grayson turned to me. 'Are you going to do what he said?'
'He has a point,' I said. 'That email will do a lot of damage. And he is still paying me to look after his brother's affairs.'
'Whatever,' Grayson said. 'You do what you have to do. Just don't delete anything we'll need for evidence. And don't leave town before coming in for a statement. And then... hell, just stay out of my life for a change.'
And then he left, and I sat at the computer and opened up the Deathswitch page and looked at Enoch's last email again.
I hated to admit it, but Jericho was right. His brother's email would ruin his family’s memories of their son/husband/father. And yeah, it would do no good to Jericho Publishing if their religious clients discovered that one of the founders was homosexual, especially when the other founder was in jail for murder. The email was a destructive and unwelcome force, and no-one wanted it to be released.
Except for Enoch Jericho, who loved Jesus and loved other men and couldn't work out how to reconcile those two needs while he still lived. And who was ready to sacrifice his family's memories and respect if it meant he could reconcile them after death. Even if it meant he was going to Hell for who he was.
I pulled up the account and changed the timeframe for the emails, so that they went out daily rather than monthly. One initial, one reminder; in two days Enoch's family, friends and clients would find it in their inboxes, click the link and learn an inconvenient truth. And they would cope with it somehow. Life would go on. For them.
In the end, my clients may be the living ones who paid me, but the work I did is for the dead. Because someone had to watch out for them.
...which was all well and good, but I also had to watch out for myself. So I quickly started prepping my invoice to send to Jericho's secretary, hoping to get paid before Jericho Publishing went tits-up in a cloud of outrage, homophobia and murder charges.
Before the switch flipped from living to dead.
# # #
Afterword
'Inbox Zero' is a short semi-sequel to my novella The Obituarist, a crime story that introduces 'social media undertaker' Kendall Barber and the city of Port Virtue. If you haven't read that book and you're wondering who vandalised Barber's office and when Detective Grayson saved his life in the past, then you should definitely go check out The Obituarist. It's only $2.99 and can be found on a number of ebook sites, including Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, the iBookstore... lots of places. It's a fun read.
If you've already read The Obituarist (or even if you haven't), then I hope you enjoyed this short trip back to the world of Kendall Barber and the digital afterlife industry. I'm working on a full-length (well, full-novella-length) sequel to that book, and it should be out sometime in 2013. But a number of people wanted a story right now, and I had an idea, and I thought it'd be fun to write something short and quick to keep their appetites whetted.
Deathswitch is a real company and a real service, and the folks there were gracious enough to look this story over for errors; any mistakes in my portrayal of them are my fault, not theirs. If you're interested in their services, a basic account (one email recipient, no attachments) is free.
This cover of this story is a clumsily-modified version of Carla McKee's original cover for The Obituarist, with the new title added in Photoshop. Kind of cheap, I know, but the only affordable option for a story I'm giving away for free.
If you've enjoyed this story, spread the love! Feel free to distribute it to friends, family, well-wishers and torrent sites. The more readers the better. And there's more free work (and a few inexpensive ebooks) available as well from the links below.
Discover other titles by Patrick O’Duffy at Smashwords.com:
The Obituarist
Hotel Flamingo
Godheads and Other Stories
'The Descent'
'Watching the Fireworks'
'The 86 Tram Disaster as Outlined in a Series of Ten Character Studies'
'Hearts of Ice'
'Pension Day'
Connect with me online
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